spirit, society, technology, and culture

Another OKCupid study: Preselection rears its ugly head, again

I’m not innately a misogynist, but I think most American women are seriously defective, for probably cultural reasons. I’m going to establish one of the reasons why in this post. Let’s look at an OkCupid study that has recieved a lot of attention: Your Looks and Your Inbox. Not surprisingly, it shows that women are focused as strongly on appearance as men are. Surprise? Not really. Cause for moral outrage? No. Everyone knows that looks are a substantial component of the dating process, and most of us accept this. Thankfully, not everyone’s appraisal of attractiveness is the same. A few of us are attractive to most people; most of us are attractive to some people. Given enough tries, we find one that likes us; life goes on. The real shocker is this: women on OkCupid have rated 80% of the men as unattractive, including four demonstrably average-looking men (OkCupid staff). It’s quite possible that this reflects only on the women who chose to give ratings– e.g. that bitchy women rate men, the rest don’t. However, although it is far from a scientific analysis, this publication contradicts much of what society prefers to believe about women: that they are kind, less shallow than men, and relatively accepting of the average man’s appearance.

The average man, based on the histogram, appears to have been rated at about 1.4 stars (out of 5) by women. That’s a D, on an A-F scale. Let me explain just how bad that is. A general rule in survey design is that ratings of anything will be inflated compared to the respondent’s actual opinion. If 100 viewers watch a television show and their ratings of it average 3.7 stars, on a 1-to-5 scale, that’s not a “good” rating. The show sucked! The same goes for performance reviews. A ubiquitious constant in such surveys is the “real average” of 4.3– a product rated below this by the public, on a 1-5 scale, is generally below-average. (Expert raters and critics are more conservative in their grading; a 3-star film, according to Ebert, is not being rated as mediocre.) And what is the average GPA at Ivy League colleges (where there are few poor students who must be given failing grades)? It’s about 3.3. It’s the same principle.

People seem to be much more candid when rating the physical attractiveness of strangers, so this rating inflation may not apply, but I’d still contend that a luke-warm rating– say, 3 stars– is not a good sign. In any case, the graph of male ratings of women shows absolutely no inflation. The distribution of attractiveness ratings seems to show a symmetric, bell-shaped curve. This is what we’d expect, and I posted on this matter in October. An average woman is sexually attractive to about 45% of men; an 85th-percentile woman is physically acceptable for about 71%, and a 15th-percentile woman is acceptable to about 23 percent. It’s fairly close to a normal distribution. For men, the story is different, and for those who lack the skills to project sociosexual confidence (e.g. “Game”), quite dismal.

Now consider the distribution of attractiveness ratings given by women to men on OkCupid, which exhibits severe skew in the fugly direction. Of seven categories, a quarter of men fall into the “least attractive” category, while almost none fall into the “most attractive” category. The median male is generally given terrible ratings, with only a few men in the thin rightward tail rated well. This occurred, one should note, in an environment of passive rating, where “Game” is almost certainly not a major factor. It’s likely, then, that these men were rated under the assumption that they have average (e.g. almost none) game.

Men on online dating sites are assumed to have poor game, and to be single, two severe attraction killers. As defined in my October analysis, a man with “7” looks (84th percentile) and “4” game (43rd percentile) is sexually attractive to only 2.7% of women. Of course, posting to an online dating site is suggestive of weak game, to the extent that this trait is tacitly assumed by most women. This, in my opinion, explains why the men were rated so badly– and, yes, 1.4 stars is not merely below-average, but abysmal, keeping in mind what I said about rating inflation. I would argue that the cutoff for a “good” average is probably in the mid-3 range (this is someone who is substantially attractive to a few women). Yet less than 10% of men are rated so highly.

What is “game”, again? I defined it as sociosexual confidence, but its root is preselection. Men with “game” are those who adopt the mannerisms of the sexually experienced and somewhat callous. They’ve adopting a set of behaviors to suggest preselection. Registering on an online dating site has the opposite effect– it indicates that a man is single, and eager enough in his search for a partner to invest time in an online profile.

Single men are really in a sandtrap– assumed, because they are unattached, to be awkward, unattractive, and undesirable. It’s inconsistent with the norms of the rest of society; for example, an unemployed man is expected to look for work– that’s normal, and people worry about him if he doesn’t– and yet a single man has absolutely no way of maintaining face while looking, even very casually, for a girlfriend. Simply put, he shouldn’t search. No paying for a stranger to have a nice dinner, no online profiles, no face lighting up when introduced to a pretty girl at a party– none of these can do a man any good.

This all comes down to preselection– women want what is not available to them. Fuck it. I agree with others who’ve called it “the root of all evil”, and it’s a trait that I advocate forcing out of the human species through any means possible– even eugenics, re-education, and aggressive social engineering.

On that note, my guess is that the OkCupid developers, rated as unattractive by their site’s women, posted pictures of themselves next to attractive women, they’d get ratings in the 3-4 range, not the abysmal scores that these average-plus men were given.

Ok. I’m done getting riled up and angry. I need a drink. Over-and-out.

32 Responses

However, I think this kind of survey for women runs the risk of really overstating the case. The reason for that is that while looks are of some importance to women (and much more important than they have been for thousands of years, likely, in female mate selection), they are not nearly as important to women as they are to men, even today. What that means is that the range of men who are “attractive” based solely on their looks is very low — only a very, very good looking man will be considered “attractive” by most women based solely on his appearance — “attractive” in this case meaning for sex or a LTR, take your pick (although different variables are used by women in evaluating men for each of those, looks plays a subordinate role in both cases — not an irrelevant role, but a subordinate one nonetheless).

For men, it’s flipped, because men value appearance more. So for men the net of women who are “attractive” based on their appearance is bigger, because they are not “holding back” considering a woman to be attractive based on things they do not know about her from just looking at her. Women *do* hold back, however, so when they are asked purely on the basis of looks what men are “attractive”, the answer is very, very few.

That’s not really news, nor is it a cause for much concern. We all know that very few men can appeal to a woman by looks alone. The real issue you raise, however, about preselection in the context of the combat dating environment is more troublesome — it’s a case of the rich getting richer, no doubt.

Reasonable point, but the ratings these women were giving are abysmal. The median man averaged 1.5 stars out of 5. That’s not “he might be interesting, but he needs more than looks to impress me”. That’s “he’s hideous”. It’s distinctly a “no” vote.

What we’re seeing is that women, indeed, are as quick as men, if not quicker, to reject based on physical appearance at all. One difference is that a number of women tend to reject on traits related to dominance and social status but not beauty (e.g. height, race) whereas the majority of men will date a woman of nearly any “spec” if she’s beautiful.

Of course, one weakness in this argument is that the ratings are voluntary and therefore not representative of a random sample at all. Then the question is raised: is there some reason why only bitchy, shallow women are rating mens’ looks, on OkCupid, at all? It could be that this is the case.

It could be due to the sample as well, as you say. I do think, though, that the generally abysmal ratings are due to women, if asked to select solely based on appearance, having an up/down range that is very much narrower than the male range is. I guess I don’t find that very surprising, because I’ve always had the impression that there are, indeed, very few men to whom women are viscerally attracted based on appearance — the results of this very unscientific poll would confirm that anecdotal observation for me.

I don’t think that this is how it works in practice, off of the internet, however. While it remains, I think true that the number of men whom women will find attractive solely based on appearance is very small, women in the real world are mostly evaluating men on the basis of other factors primarily, much more than looks (even though today the importance of male appearance is greater than it was, say, 50 years ago). I think this is the “normal” case for women.

Also it’s important to remember that women select differently based on whether they are looking for a short term or a long term thing — the Michigan study on dads vs. cads confirmed this tendency that women have to prefer cads for short term and dads for long term. It would be interesting to see how that correlates with this unscientific poll — in other words, were the women thinking long term or short term? My guess is that the women were thinking “short term” because I think most women would select a man based on physical attractiveness only for short term relations (at least initially), and would rate all other men very poorly if that were the time frame they were considering — in other words, when looking for a short term hookup, it really is an up/down thing, and most men end up in the “down” category, not in the “he might be interesting” category, because by definition she’s looking for a short-term thing. That could also account for the abysmal ratings here for most of the men. Of course, as you have pointed out in the past on this blog, the reality that the current dating/mating market emphasizes early sex so strongly tends to skew the market towards cads and cad-preferences more than would otherwise be the case.

I think the fact that the ratings are voluntary is an important factor to consider here. If I see a man in real life, I’m going to judge his appearance whether I want to or not, and whether or not I even realize what I’m doing. Whereas, if I go on the internet with the specific intention of rating men, I’m probably going to be a much tougher audience.

In real life, a lot of things contribute to the overall impression, such as voice, walk, and mannerisms. None of these things are apparent in a photograph.

Finally, I’ve noticed that a lot of men (probably women too, but I don’t look at women) post really awful photos of themselves online. I mean photos that are too dark, too blurry, or taken from so far away that you can barely see the person. These guys could look like Orlando Bloom and you’d never know it, and personally I’d be tempted to give a low rating just on principal. Another pet peeve of mine is guys who post pictuers of themselves wearing sunglasses, with a hat jammed way down over their face. That lack of confidence reflects very badly on a person.

Although I think I have a weird fetish for glasses. Sunglasses, reading glasses, bifocals, doesn’t matter. And look at that cute, honest smile!

But, for me at least, looks aren’t that important. It wasn’t until other women started mentioning it to me that I noticed how good looking my husband is. But I think I’m unusually or even unnaturally non-superficial.

I guess it’s because I’m considered extremely good-looking myself and I know what a ball of crap I used to be inside. So, I discount looks automatically now. There are a lot of people of hideous character wrapped up in a pretty package out there.

I think I, and most women, judge men less on innate physical attractiveness, and more on mannerisms, hygiene, style, etc. Even teeth is only an issue for me because it points to hygiene and health. Does he take care of himself? Is he clean shaven and has his hair been washed and cut short? Is he well-dressed, maybe a bit preppy or elegant? If he wears glasses, are they clean or do they have smudges all over the lenses? Does he smell good? Does he have a comfortable handshake and clean nails? Does he eat with manners or is he a slob at the table? Etc.

I can’t remember anything specific about my husband’s appearance on our first date other than that he was wearing a button-down shirt and slacks. And I don’t know if that’s even true it’s just that I can safely assume that as he’s usually wearing a shirt and slacks. But I remember distinctly that his car was very clean, that he smelled good and hadn’t taken a bath in perfume (I HATE THAT), and that he was very polite and conscientious.

But it isnt preselection – and you seem to have recognized that yourself in your post, but then strangely ignored it – its rather that searching for women online has a stigma attached to to it and is seen as possible evidence of loserness. This applies only to online dating, though.

It isnt that a single male looking for women is inherently unattractive – if that were true, then women would never come to nightclubs to find guys, yet they do, all the time.

I go to nightclubs, sometimes alone, with the explicit purpose of finding women – its all quite obvious – and the women are not repelled by that, at all. Single men go to clubs all the time and do fine – on any given night out in NYC, where I live, I see roughly 50% of the guys have pretty good success with women.

Preselection isnt that big of a deal with women, sure, it will make a man more attractive, but it is one of the more minor engines of attraction in women, contrary to what many say about it.

This whole game thing is way overblown – there is a kernel of truth here exaggerated out of proportion with reality. Yes, confidence is hugely important to women, but most average looking guys, with some attention to dress and appearance, and with an even modest boost to their confidence, and who are careful not to act conspicuously like low status men, will do fine with women.

I see guys do well with girls in clubs all the time who dont come anywhere near fulfilling this ridiculous caricature of the *alpha male* you hear floating around – I see these guys, average looking but with attention to their dress, I note their interactions and they are confident and unafraid but nothing like the assholes and macho types who are supposedly beloved by ladies, and I see them do quite well.

Heck, Im one of these guys – I have little problem with women, and Im not an asshole nor a cad nor a macho type. Granted, I hasten to add I am confident and not the least bit afraid of women, and dont stand in awe of them, but I am sure you will agree that that is setting the bar pretty low.

The claims made on behalf of game, while they make exciting reading and tiltilate and shock, simply arent true when measured against reality. Or at least, they are vastly exaggerated.

Not breaking out into a radiant smile when introduced to a pretty girl is simply common sense – of course such a demonstration of lower value and subservience will have a turn off effect – but that hardly means one must be an asshole or wahtever to be attractive.

I liked this blog post. When you said you wanted to get rid of preselection by eugenics in the comments section of an earlier post when I asked you what the solution to preselection was, I thought you were joking. That’s just completely implausible and I’m sure theirs a better way. I’m pretty confident that simply by giving men more leverage in divorce courts and getting rid of female entitlement and economic empowerment, female preferences and mate choice will shift back closer to the way it was in the 1950s. You can’t even mention eugenics in America without being labeled a nazi, imagine trying to explain the dark side of female sexuality and advocating eugenics to stifle it. Feminists would want to infect you with aids and cancer and give you the slowest most painful death possible.

i spent 6 months in thailand..thing is, over there im a king with the ladies, and back here in the USA i can barely get a date. whats the difference IMO? society and culture. see, over there people need each other to live. 2 incomes are better than one etc etc etc. over here women do not need a partner to get by, wether that be with welfare, a good job, etc etc, and so they get really damn picky. MORE picky than they need to be IMO, to the point to where most (97%) men are no longer good enough to talk to. pre selection does have its place in generating sexual attraction i will admit, HOWEVER that preselection has more to do with environmental factors such as perception of beauty/masculenity based on society norms than even most scientist will admit.

[…] brain, but Pugach’s tomcatting was part of what drew Miss Riss to him to begin with. Preselection triggers a lady’s downtown waterworks like nothing else. Never forget that women love men who are loved […]

This may have to do with the fact that men do not do as much to increase their physical attractiveness as women do. A woman with thick eyebrows will pluck or wax them, a men usually will not. Eyebrows can make a big difference, they “frame” the face. Women also accentuate their features with makeup and style their hair in various ways. With men, it’s what you see is what you get. If women let their brows go, did not enhance their features with makeup or do their hair, then they might also start looking as “natural” and as un-attractive as men. And on the otherhand if men did things like wax their brows or wear some light makeup, they might start looking as attractive as women.

Also, men bald, women don’t know. Balding is just not a good look.

On the whole women are not better looking than men, they just do stuff that gives them the appearance as such.

Because of that stereotype, prematurely balding men, or men who for any other reason are self-conscious about their looks, are fucked. This is just misandry and female privilege extending themselves to the realm of the body aesthetic.

I’ve read several of your entries, and have the following questions for you. I’d appreciate a sincere response.

Why can’t men have “Game” and still be interested in a loving relationship? Why can’t ‘combat dating’ and love coexist? Dating is prelude to a relationship, after all. Does it matter that “Game” factors into desirability, if other more meaningful traits are also at play?
A man with good “Game” has high confidence and good social skills, which correlates with career success, where a variant of “Game” is required. Hence, it is not just a meaningless skill used to bed women. (Cough, just because you don’t have “Game” for whatever reason doesn’t make it a meaningless, useless practice).

Casual sex is adolescent, fine. So why would you have a problem with adolescents engaging in adolescent behavior? What’s with your obsession of behaving yourself when you were younger? I can’t help but think it has to do with your bad social experience in college, which has somehow turned you off to casual sex because for you it was near impossible to get/highly uncomfortable to engage in.
You vilify women who have had casual sex in your “Lust Story”, which is unnecessary. What if Sarah felt no shame about her past? Why would Sarah even care how many sexual partners Mr. Wright has had, if they were happy with each other? And if she doesn’t, why should he? (Assuming STDs are not an issue for either. Give me the moral reasoning behind this).

I’ve had plenty of sexual and romantic flings, and it doesn’t hamper my ability to care for a man that I love, nor do I have uncultured taste in men. Good luck finding the slim minority of women that you are hunting for.

i’d rank that women who have turned to online dating have struggled in some manner in their personal pursuits of men….thus you have an already more skewed pool to begin with. just a thought. might explain some of the low rating.

Yes the survey explained that women rated 80% of men as unattractive…it also went on to explain that women STILL were more rational when it came to picking a potential mate.

Even though men rated MOST women as Medium, 2/3 of them chased after the top 1/3. They’d rather fight for the super attractive girls then go for the medium girls. Meanwhile women were more likely to accept the males, even if they thought they were ugly and message whoever.

Try to be a little less condemn of American women for allowing American men dig their own holes and throw themselves in it. Can’t blame us for enjoying the show.

It may also be because women simply don’t rate men’s attractiveness the same way than men do women’s–ie, on a sliding scale. I am a woman. I don’t know if this is true for other women, but, lemme tell you this: I am either attracted to a man, or I am not. If I am not attracted to him, he is basically a 1 to me. I don’t care if he is average, hideous, or even theoretically-good-looking-but-just-not-my-type–my reaction to all these is equal: I have zero interest. I would rate them one or zero on my attraction to them.

If I AM attracted to a man, then he is either a 4 or a 5. Ie, of the men I am attracted to, I can differentiate between “I find him fairly attractive” and “I find him VERY attractive.” Without personality, wit, and other things that really come out best in one-on-one interaction, I would give very few people 5s.

So basically: I can give 1s, 4s or 5s. I TRY to give 2s and 3s as well, but really… there’s not much difference to me between 1s, 2s and 3s.

Why can’t men have “Game” and still be interested in a loving relationship? Why can’t ‘combat dating’ and love coexist?

Good questions! Perhaps it is because once you understand what exactly makes a woman love you (or anyone else), it just doesn’t feel like love anymore. :-(

OK, I know love is more than just the Game. But still I have two thoughts: If I would love her exactly the same way as I do now, but I would not have Game, she would probably not return my love. If anyone with Game much better than me would try to take her, there is a chance he would succeed.

Casual sex is adolescent, fine.

Not all “adolescents” are the same. For some, casual sex is OK, for others, it is not. Maybe this reflects some character trait that Mr. Wright wants in his wife. Shouldn’t he?

Give me the moral reasoning behind this

Why should men base their criteria for women only on moral reasoning? We also have instincts. Some things are attractive to us, some are repulsive. Woman’s promiscuity is repulsive for some men (unless they want only a one night stand, when it is useful). Are we allowed to have our own criteria of attractivity, and to announce them loudly?

you’re making lots of assumptions. Look at men with photos that have them with women… if those rate higher and stand out above those that don’t. Perhaps it’s a factor. Your ramblings while interesting, are just that, ramblings. There are a lot of assumptions going on here based upon unproven theories. Preselection is a THEORY.

Originally posted on dalrocks, but i’ve edited & toned the post down not to offend the average chump who still thinks all women are special snowflakes & puritan virgins …. ie the average clueless white nationalist, or conservative …

This is why you need preselection … this is why you need game … sorry guys but the truth hurts …

Dalrock calls Christian women whores PRECISELY because the AMOUNT of MEN the average CHRISTIAN WESTERN WOMAN sleeps with is the EXACT amount of men, a woman who moonlights as a PROSTITUTE sleeps with

Lets do the math …

The average Western whore on the cock carousel for five years, who CONSIDERS herself a good girl, a chaste christian

Lets say she ONLY has TWO one night stands a month, thats not counting the boyfriend, or the ltr she’s usually rotating

That two one night stands a month, ie 2×12 amounts to 24 different men she sleeps with a year

Multiply that over a period of 5 years, thats a TOTAL of 60 men she’s slept with

EVEN if you conservatively assume for ONE night stand a month, thats STILL 30 men she’s slept with

This is WHY men HAVE to learn game, EVEN the average woman with a SINGLE one night stand a month, by the AGE OF 25!!!, has on average slept with OVER 30 men

The social circles the average woman moves in between the age of 19 to 25, usually consist of MASSIVE amounts of alpha men, or older guys with game

The average Christian woman, has had sex with over 30+ men easily, at rate of ONE nightstand a month over five years, by the time they hit 30 & start trawling churches for a beta chump

This is why these women are called whores & sluts …

& yes ALL women are like that, do the math, on average over a period of 20 or 30 years, ALL women are sluts

Of course theres the odd special snowflake virgin, who is so freakishly abnormal spawning blogs like dalrock & athol

On average the girlfriend you’re in a SERIOUS ltr with, has slept with over 20+ guys by the time she’s 30, & by 40 the average slut is raising a catfarm, or trying to get her husband to learn game, so she can relive her past glories of alpha vaginal std accumulation

Of course I dont expect the average chump to do the math above

Only a mangina like ruddytwat for brains, tries to put men off from learning game by stating inane crap like

” MEN shouldnt learn game because women dont have to learn game …”

Newsflash, women are TAUGHT GAME by their MOTHERS, sisters, grandmothers, sororities etc.

How do you think women’ve been getting betas to slave away for centuries, while they grilled everything from the milkman, next door neighbour, local badboy alpha, as stayathome moms

The thing with OkCupid is that they only tell the person that you “chose them” if you rate them as a 4 or 5, When I was on the site, I often only rated people through the QuickMatch thing, and since it only tells them that I like them if I rate them a 4 or 5, I figured the rest of the ratings don’t matter. I often only rated people either a 1 or a 4. 1 meaning “no i’m not interested,” and 4 meaning “yes I am interested.” I found no need for the 2 or 3 ratings. What’s the point? I also didn’t rate people a 5, because I figured I wouldn’t know if they were really a 5 till I met them in person.

My point is…. these ratings might be WAY off from what they would be if it really mattered whether I rated someone a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.